The global Middle East studies (GMES) major at UC Irvine was officially dissolved during the 2024-25 school year and is not currently accepting any students; students who were enrolled in the major before the sunset are still able to complete their required classes.
The earliest available data on GMES enrollment was in 2017, showing five people enrolled in the program. 2019 saw the most students, with six, before falling to as low as one student in 2024.
Associate Dean for Curriculum and Student Services Yong Chen said GMES faculty unanimously voted to discontinue the program in fall 2024. The Humanities Executive Committee then officially approved the dissolution in spring 2024 before the UCI Academic Senate issued a final decision.
“The [Academic] Senate, which has the final approval of any decision regarding the future of a program hearing, … my assumption is that it approved [the sunset] sometime in the winter quarter of 2025,” Chen told New University.
Mark LeVine, director of the GMES major since its inception, said the COVID-19 pandemic was one of the main reasons as to why the major saw low enrollment.
“We came back to a very different universe,” LeVine told New University. “And on top of that, of course, the university started experiencing severe financial issues, including the School of Humanities.”
LeVine said that if GMES had been an established program for many years, it might have been able to survive the COVID-19 pandemic.
“When you combine COVID with the general cultural framework that students are coming from, especially students we had thought would be our main base, it was a pretty big combination that was very hard to recover [from],” LeVine said.
The program’s roots stretch back over a decade of student activism. The Middle East Studies Student Initiative (MESSI) was established in 2004, advocating for the creation of a Middle East studies major and garnered the support of many students on campus. The major was officially established in fall 2016, following more than a decade of planning.
LeVine said he decided to help start the program because he felt there was a growing interest in the region from the student body, especially after the 2010s Arab Spring, which saw countries like Tunisia and Egypt undergo drastic political shifts.
“A major goal of [GMES] was to broaden the region to really help people understand the ‘Middle East’ is just a word and the region is so deeply globalized that we need to always look at it through those connections,” LeVine said. “And to have the students understand that, no matter what one area you might like the best: economics, history [or] anthropology, you need to have a broad understanding of all the questions that you can ask to truly appreciate what you’re studying.”
The GMES program combined classes from the Schools of Humanities, Social Sciences, Public Health and Social Ecology, making it one of the few inter-school majors at UC Irvine.
Before the program was established, LeVine spoke to other universities with Middle East studies programs, gathered various professors together at UC Irvine and traveled to conferences across the country to help with his plans for the major. He met with professors for a couple of years before developing a proposal that was unanimously approved.
UCI is not the only university to shake up their Middle East program. This March, the faculty leaders of the Center for Middle East Studies at Harvard University were dismissed following claims of antisemitic programming.
Additionally, after demands from the Trump administration and threats of budget cuts, Columbia University appointed a new Senior Vice Provost to be in charge of the Middle East Institute and Middle Eastern, South Asian and African studies major, among other programs focused on the Middle East.
Chen said that the situation at UCI is separate from this national trend.
“The conversation started several years ago, long before … the closing of such programs in other places,” Chen said. “The thinking about [the dissolvement] long precedes any of that.”
Anteaters are still able to take GMES-related classes through the global cultures major, where they can choose an emphasis in the global Middle East.
Despite the challenges nationwide, LeVine remains optimistic that UCI students will still be able to engage deeply with the Middle East.
“In terms of the knowledge available for students, nothing has changed, right? We’re still doing the same courses. They still have the same opportunity to study with the same people. No one’s lost their job,” LeVine said. “For students who really want to [study] the Middle East, they have the same opportunity more or less.”
Ennes Kahf is a Features Intern for the fall 2025 quarter. He can be reached at ekahf@uci.edu.
Edited by Joshua Gonzales